Country Comments

Yemen has roughly one and a half times more people than can be sustained based on current consumption levels. The pressures exerted on the environment including overfishing, deforestation, land desertification, pollution and water scarcity coupled with a civil war since 2014 have created a horrific humanitarian and ecological crisis. Over two thirds of the population requires food assistance and childhood acute malnutrition is rampant.

UNICEF warned that 7.8 million children had no access to education following Covid-19-related school closures and nearly 10 million did not have adequate access to water and sanitation. Women also continued to face severe discrimination in law and practice. They cannot marry without the permission of their male guardian and do not have equal rights to divorce, inheritance, or child custody. Lack of legal protection leaves them exposed to domestic and sexual violence. Child marriage also continued, and Yemen still has no minimum age of marriage. (1)

With high fertility rates averaging just under 4 children per woman the country’s population, notwithstanding net migration from conflict, has increased every year over 600,000 for the past decade and there is little indication this figure will reverse for a long time only further worsening the human and environmental calamity that exists there now.

(1) https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/yemen